


The Message

by samidha



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s01e09 Home, Gen, POV John Winchester, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-18
Updated: 2008-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-14 12:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11782755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/samidha
Summary: Dean, everyday hero. (The summary was the prompt.)





	The Message

John listened to the voicemail from Dean for the third time since he’d received it. His chest had started aching as soon as the phone had chimed to let him know there was one to hear—anyone else would do just what his voicemail message said and call his son. 

John had been in Lawrence for a day and a half when Dean’s voicemail let him know that they’d arrived. He wished it could be coincidence, or maybe he wished he wasn’t here at all, but the omens had lined up right and he couldn’t not be here. He didn’t think about what had brought the boys here. Every time he heard Dean’s voice he only wished that they weren’t.

If he answered that voicemail—and of course he wanted to—it would only draw the boys closer to him, and closer to the hunt for this goddamn thing. If there was one thing he could still try to do it was to spare the boys this one hunt. Just this one.

He had tried hard enough to spare them over the years, but he was a military man on a hunt and he couldn’t help seeing the same potential as a hunter in Dean. Dean had always said he wanted to be a fireman, and firemen lay their lives on the line for strangers. So he had known that about his son, probably from the time he’d known Dean was serious about that wish. Hunting was like firefighting, only it was fighting a force so few people knew to protect themselves from. It wasn’t more noble, but it was more needed, especially for the Winchesters. Or, at least, for John.

He had wanted to spare Dean, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold that ideal for long. Dean had lost a mother as surely as John had lost a wife, and he was made vulnerable by her loss. He needed a purpose. And if John could give him that, well, that was within his purpose as his father.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t what John wanted, what he’d dreamed of when he thought of raising a son, but he’d recognized the need in his little boy more years ago than he liked to think about, and he had filled it.

He had run the drills and made himself not think about playing football at the park. He had taught Dean to be safe with knives and guns and hated that none of this was just in case. He had taught the boy to camp and forced away the fantasy that they were merely on a weekend vacation. He had done the job and raised a hunter because he hadn’t known the signs then and even if he had they weren’t showing up anywhere to be tracked.

Now, with his boys here in the town that all the omens pointed to—and John didn’t know what the omens were foretelling, but he had an idea, an idea that left him cold and sick inside—the only thing John Winchester could do, as their father, to keep them safe, was not answer that goddamn voicemail.


End file.
